New Workflow System

Microsoft announced Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) on Sept. 14, 2005, as the programming model, engine and tools for quickly building workflow-enabled applications on Windows.
Seems to be an interesting technology, because nowadays a lot applications implement their own workflow engines. Moreover the support for human based workflow is often not very sophisticated amongst professional products like BEA Weblogic Integration or Biztalk Server.

Speaking in terms of Microsoft technology especially Biztalk Server and WWF overlap in a lot of areas.
The when to use what guidelines from Microsoft are:

Use Windows Workflow Foundation when:

An application will itself host workflows. Windows Workflow Foundation lets workflow be built into an application, allowing the workflow to be deployed and managed as a native part of the application. Because it’s focused on integrating diverse applications rather than providing a general workflow framework, BizTalk Server always runs orchestrations within the BizTalk Server process.

The business process being implemented requires human workflow. BizTalk Server addresses system workflow, and so it lacks Windows Workflow Foundation’s support for things such as state machine workflows and dynamic update. A scenario that requires both human workflow and more complex system integration services could be addressed by using Windows Workflow Foundation and BizTalk Server together, however. For example, the Office “12” support for document-centric workflows, based on Windows SharePoint Services, might be used for the human aspects of the problem, while BizTalk Server handles the system integration aspects. The two can interoperate using the BizTalk Server Adapter for SharePoint.
The workflow will execute on a client system. BizTalk Server is a server-focused product, and so it’s less well-suited to run on desktop machines.

Use BizTalk Server when:

Solving an EAI problem that requires communication with diverse applications on diverse platforms. Because of its focus on cross-platform integration, a large set of adapters is available for BizTalk Server that allows communication with a range of other software. Windows Workflow Foundation is focused solely on workflow, not EAI, and so it doesn’t provide these things.
B2B services are required. Windows Workflow Foundation doesn’t address this area, while BizTalk Server provides tools for working with trading partners, accelerators for RosettaNet, SWIFT, and other industry standards, and more.
BPM services, such as Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), are required. While the Windows Workflow Foundation tracking infrastructure can be used to create these services, BizTalk Server provides important extras, such as tools that let information workers define their own BAM views.
A complete management infrastructure and support for increased scalability are required. Unlike Windows Workflow Foundation, BizTalk Server includes a full set of tools for administering and scaling a production environment.

So in essence WWF is for Human Based Workflow, whereas BTS is for Enterprise Integration.
Seems to be a good idea not to use BTS Human Workflow Services but to wait for WWF until end of 2006.

Culminis Speakers Bureau

Recently I joined the Culminis Speakers Bureau.

Quotation:
“The Culminis Speakers Bureau, a service available exclusively to Culminis Member Organizations, and
provides top IT presenters including Microsoft speakers. Only presenters with top credentials are allowed in the Culminis Speakers Bureau, and after a speaker is utilized, Member Organizations are allowed to rate the speakers online, as well as view prior speaker ratings.”

Please check the August Newsletter to get more information about Culminis.

The Challenge of SOAD

A major challenge establishing service orient architectures (SOA) and applications is how to design the right services in order to make them reusable and sustainable. A lot of questions have to be answered. For instance:

What are the service candidates?
What is the right service granularity?
Is it better to use a top-down or bottom-up approach?
etc, etc, …

Apart from technical issues answering these kind of questions is very important for the quality of the resulting applications. Albeit the traditional OOAD approaches are helpful, SOA requires a different perspective on the subject. This perspective is party technical an partly business related as existing business processes have to be taken into account.

The article Elements of Service-Oriented Analysis and Design provides a good introduction into the subject.

Experience shows that it is a good approach to have mixed teams with experienced people from the technical and the business departments.
SOAD is neither a merely technical nor a merely business related task. It’s both. That’s the challenge.

Biztalk 2006 at a Glance

I’m currently working at Microsoft TechEd in Amsterdam. My focus is on Business Process Management and Biztalk technology. At the conference I have the opportunity to see and try most of the new Biztalk Server 2006 features. From what I’ve seen so far the next release will not introduce any major changes, but will bring a lot of improvements. Below I’ve listed some information concerning these new features.

1. Zoom
A feature that was really missing is simple zoom functionality in the visual designers of Biztalk, e.g. the orchestration designer. With Biztalk 2006 it’s possible to zoom every model in the designer. That allows to visualize large business processes inside of visual studio.

2. Backwards compatibility
Biztalk Server 2006 is backwards compatible with the 2004 version. That means binding files and other artifacts can be used without or little modification.

2. Admin console
The admin console has been greatly improved. It’s a MMC snap-in and now more like a central point of administration which allows to get status and health information very easily.

3. Deployment
All Biztalk artifacts (bindings, rules, assemblies) can be bundled to applications. These applications can be deployed in it’s entirety. They can be exported as msi files. Such a file can be imported later on a different machine an started with a simple click.

4. BAM Portal
The new BAM portal allows to get access to key performance indicators via web frontend. This tool is really useful for analysts. One can create alerts which send e.g. emails if a particular threshold was reached. In conjunction with the admin console it allows to monitor applications on business- and technical levels as well. The input data for BAM can now also be created by Visio.

5. Routing of failed messages
Extended filter expressions allow to subscribe to failed messages and to process them accordingly. This gives much better control over runtime related problems.

My Favourite TechEd Sessions

This year I am attending TechEd Amsterdam again.
Most of the time I’ll be working in the Ask The Expert and Hands On Labs areas as a subject-matter expert for Biztalk Server.
If you would like to meet me don’t hesitate to come by.

Here is a list of my favourite conference sessions:

– Monitoring and Troubleshooting Biztalk Server 2006 Solutions
– What’s new in Biztalk Server 2006 Runtime
– Implementation of Common Integration Patterns with Biztalk Server
– Biztalk Server Capacity Planning
– Building and Maintaining a Performant and Healthy Biztalk Solution
– Biztalk Server 2006 Business Activity Monitoring
– Deploying and Managing Biztalk Server 2006 Solutions

As you can see this year my focus is on Biztalk Server technology.
I hope that I will have enough time to attend as much sessions as possible to get fist hand information especially concerning the upcoming Biztalk Server 2006 release.